


Against the Sky

by subjunctive



Category: Tin Man (2007)
Genre: Drugs, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-29
Updated: 2011-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-21 23:09:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subjunctive/pseuds/subjunctive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of missing moments from throughout the miniseries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Against the Sky

DG tries to cover her nose during the show; but the vapors - heedless of her reluctance - waft over the crowd. For most of the audience, it means two things: relaxation and good feelings. But she is closer to the stage; and so the vapors are almost corporeal, near-solid as she attempts not to breathe them in. But it’s hopeless.

“I feel so ... light,” she sighs to Glitch, who is sitting next to her.

He merely shakes his head at her condition. “Vapors have that effect on people.” He stares unhappily at their tabletop, dingy and pitted in places. “I should have known that, I suppose.”

“No!” she protests, a little too earnestly, laying a hand on his arm. “Come on. Don’t worry about me. I feel great.”

And she does. The knots of anxiety in her stomach have slowly dissipated, leaving only a light and airy sensation behind. A smile touches the edges of her lips and a giggle is only a few paces behind: whatever these vapors are, she decides, she likes them. Even if Cain - even if _Glitch_ would disapprove.

Raw seems openly untouched by the vapors. Across from her, his shoulders droop and his whiskers - his mouth - twists angrily at the display put on before them. The costumes, the choreography, the drugs: she doesn’t know what bothers him the most.

Come to think of it, Glitch doesn’t seemed much affected by the vapors, either. Wide-eyed, DG turns to look at him; he’s biting his lip, staring fixedly at the figure of the Mystic Man presented in front of them. _I wonder if the half of his brain that’s gone was the half that was affected by the vapors,_ she thinks, and giggles; when both of her companions turn to look at her curiously, she quickly covers her mouth with a hand. That wasn’t a nice thing to laugh about, she knows (somewhere in her mind, she still knows that).

The show ends with a fireworks show, but a cheap one. (Even DG, who had gone fireworks-hunting with Popsicle every year as a child, and haggled over the most expensive and fantastical ones, could see that.) A few pops here, a few bangs here; a rainbow, a dragon; they are unimpressive at best, and fodder for upper-class mockery at worst.

As the dragon-firework roars - his roar composed of a glittering stream of stars - DG turns to Glitch and whispers loudly in his ear, voicing something she has been thinking about the entire show: “I wonder what Cain would have thought of all of this.”

Glitch cocks his head, looks at her, and says in an odd voice, one she can’t quite interpret, “I’m sure he wouldn’t have liked it at all.”

***

The high doesn’t last long, though. The moment the show ends - dancers prancing offstage flirtatiously, blowing kisses - she can already begin to feel the _lack_ , the acute feeling of loss that accompanies the cessation of the vapors. (And this is when, this is why, she knows that vapors are a Bad Thing.)

She stumbles across the red carpet, leaning against the glass doors that are the entrance to the Hall, and sighs. Her mouth open, she reaches for the doorknob and misses, once, twice.

It is Raw who first notices her condition. “DG,” he whispers with the air of concern she had begun to crave, “DG is not feeling right.”

“DG is not feeling right,” she confirms, pressing her cheek against the glass and closing her eyes. It is cool, it is solid, it is like touching your skin to a chunk of diamond, or a piece of ice: it reminds her of something - something cold and smooth and distressingly familiar - but she doesn’t know what, can’t yet put a name to it.

Glitch tries to pat her on the shoulder awkwardly. “DG will be all right,” he says encouragingly, continuing with the third-person narration they had established. “She just has to walk it off.”

DG stares at the zipper on his head and wonders. She looks at the shaggy fur covering Raw and wonders about that, too. She wonders what they are missing. She wondered if they are all missing something. She wonders what she is missing, why she was put here, what had created the negative space in her life, that she only now could begin to recognize.

“We have to see the Mystic Man,” she whispers, steadying herself and swallowing.

“We have to see the Mystic Man,” Glitch repeats, looking reassured. And his reassurance comforts Raw in turn.

***

She hadn’t expected to see Cain again - at least not so soon after parting ways.

When they meet, he stares at her - openly, nakedly, mouth parted un-self-consciously. DG crosses her arms over her dress, considers explaining that it wasn’t her plan, wasn’t her idea, can he stop staring at her now because his look is making her feel very funny inside, please and thank you.

“You came,” she says quietly instead, with a smile playing on the edge of her lips.

“Looks like we’re fighting the same fight after all,” he says finally.

“I knew you’d come back,” she whispers to him confidentially, taking hold of his arm, and he shakes his head like he doesn’t want to believe it (but he does).

***

Watching Cain alternately threaten and beg his way into stealing the showbiz wagon, DG is both impressed and dismayed. A cop, a lawman, was introducing chaos and the random: and yet is was for the good, too (she hoped). Their good, at least.

She pauses beside the vehicle, stares for a moment at the pale, rotting colors and the designs that once must have been bright and almost tangible: the sun, the moon, the stars, and the people that had dared to reach them.

“Kid,” Cain said harshly, and she started.

“Sorry,” she muttered. He shrugged and gestured toward the van with one calloused hand.

She climbs into the front-passenger seat and exchanges a quick smile with Cain. “Ready to go?” she asks, and the grim smile on the edges of his lips is her only response. (It’s easy to interpret, though; she knows what he wants, what he’ll do to get it).

DG starts the engine for him, and his hand covers hers for a moment before she pulls hers back into her lap, embarrassed. A flush staining her cheek, she trains her gaze out the windshield, determinedly not looking at him.

“All right, we’ll go.” His voice is so quiet that no one else, save her, can hear him.

***

Their first night, they find themselves out in the “country” of the O.Z. It’s like Kansas all over again, is DG’s first thought, only colder and even more isolated and lonely.

There’s no one out here: that’s the first thing DG realizes when Cain drives off-road at the sight of an old barn. They examine it together, hunting for inhabitants. But whoever had used it was long gone, and only left behind a ruinous wreck. There’s nothing useful for them there except cover; the van is a distinctive one, although it seems unlikely that anyone would find them. Chunks of time - entire hours - pass in which they hear no other vehicles and encounter no other travelers.

“People scared of Azkadellia,” Raw informs her when she asks about this.

DG nods silently.

“We should camp here for the night,” Cain announces. “We’re not yet north enough to encounter snow, but we’ve got some insulation to keep out the cold. Might not stay true if we keep journeying northward.”

Glitch and Raw argue vehemently over who will sit closer to the driver’s seat, finally culminating in a rock-paper-scissors competition, which Raw wins every single time Glitch challenges him to a rematch.

“That’s not fair at all!” Glitch whines. “Can’t you see the future or something?”

Raw merely grins, showing his teeth.

“Well, as long as you lend me some of your fur,” Glitch grumbles.

They have blankets stacked in the back (a consequence of Cain’s forward thinking and, _ahem_ , connections, and DG is once again grateful for his presence on their journey). No pillows, but this isn’t exactly a Best Western. DG almost smiles at the comparison.

Glitch and Raw try to offer Cain a place to sleep: “You can lie down better back here,” Glitch says earnestly. “I promise it’s better for your back. I don’t know how I know that, but I do.”

Cain just shakes his head, dismisses the idea altogether. “I’ll be fine. Someone’s got to be lookout, anyway.”

DG bites her lip and wants to say something, but instead she contents herself with silence and climbs into the back to lay between Raw and Glitch. They huddle together for warmth, and despite the weather, it doesn’t take long for her to drift off to restless sleep.

***

DG awakes with a start: shivering, sweaty, and scared. Even with the other two figures packed around her, she feels the cold, somehow - on the inside, nestled deep in her bones.

Raw and Glitch are still sleeping heavily, Glitch curled up on his side (sometimes letting out incomprehensible words in a murmur) and Raw snoring up a storm. They are untouched by her fears and her nightmares, and she is grateful for that.

Trying not to disturb anyone, DG tiptoes lightly over Raw’s body and, thrown off balance, steadies herself against the back of the passenger seat. She almost falls over, but catches herself in time; and then begins to clamber into the front cab, where she can see Cain sitting, a perfectly still silhouette.

Halfway into the cab, he finally notices her.

“Surprise,” she whispers with a smile and a quick wave, and then steps all the way over to the front, falling into the seat across from Cain and curling up.

The expression on his face is one of shock. He pales, a tic starts jumping over his right eye, and he looks away from her quickly - and then back at her again.

“What’s wrong?” she whispers.

He waves a hand, looks like he is about to say something and then changes his mind. “Nothing.” He hesitates. “You looked like a ghost.”

DG raises her hand to touch her face, surprised. “Who? Whose ghost?”

Cain looks at her, then, a solid, intent look; his hand reaches out to her, and she doesn’t pull away from it. He doesn’t touch her, though, his fingers just hovering near the flower still in her hair. His fingers make a motion to grasp it; but he pulls back and lets his hand fall away, instead. He turns back to gazing out the windshield; his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.

“Oh!” A warm blush suffuses DG’s cheeks. “My flower ... I forgot it was there.” She touches the petals softly and smiles at him. “I bet it’s all crushed now, anyway, from sleeping on it.” She pauses, and pulls it out, looks it over. “I guess I should get rid of it.”

“No,” he says suddenly, strongly. “No, just leave it in.”

When she hesitates, uncertain, his fingers pluck the flower from her hands, and his other hand takes gentle hold of her chin and nudges it to one side. Her eyelids flutter closed almost automatically as he carefully replaces the flower in her hair, tucking it behind her ear. His thumb pauses, the lightest, barest touch, on her cheekbone - and then, abruptly, the moment is over, he’s grunting and turning away, settling back in for a silent night.

She looks out the windshield; there is a crack in the barn, and through it, unfamiliar stars wink down at her slowly.

***

“For fifteen years, I had a family,” DG says to Cain, over the _clip-clop_ of the horses trotting. “For fifteen years, they were my family. Now they’re not anymore. Now I have a whole new family, except I barely remember them and they were gone for so long and I couldn’t remember them and now they’re supposed to be my family again.” Her voice is so quiet by the end that he can barely hear her.

He shakes his head anyway. “The parents that raised you, they were your family, DG. Whatever you learned about them in the O.Z., that doesn't change what you remember. You grew up with them, you were raised by them, you loved them and I’m sure they loved you back. They’re your family.”

She takes a deep breath and lets it out erratically. He can feel her body shaking with the effort of not crying behind him, and he’s sorry he can’t turn around.

***

“You sure you want to do this, Princess?” he asks, for what _has_ to be the fourth time now. His head is bowed, and he’s poking absently at the fire with a stick.

“Don’t call me that,” she says sternly.

He hides a smile. “DG, you sure you want to do this?”

DG rolls her eyes; in the darkness, she’s thankful he can’t see it. “And that makes five. Yes, Mr. Cain,” she says, a little teasingly, leaning forward and folding her hands in her lap. “I know what I’m getting into.” Except he doesn’t think she does.

“You know,” he says abruptly, “you don’t --” He finds himself wanting to say, _you don’t have to do this_ , but the the words stick in his throat: they are a lie, pure and simple. Wyatt Cain is an honest man, at least, so he swallows the words back down.

Because that little girl, the one he’s become so irrationally fond of, the one with wide blue eyes and hair as dark as ink, has work to do. She has her scores to settle, and her kingdom to save. She might not understand the dangers, but it’s only her that can do these things. He doesn’t know how he knows this, but he does.

But she’s shaking her head. “Of course I have to do this.” She stares morosely into the fire. “There’s no one else.” Her voice is sad and low, and Cain wonders, briefly, if she actually does want to be here, in the O.Z., or if she longs for her uncomplicated life back on the Other Side. He wonders if there’s anything for her to go back to over there.

“It’s your job,” he echoes, and she nods silently. “Only you can do it. You’ve got to bring back the old O.Z.”

She looks up sharply at that. “It won’t ever be the same,” she says slowly, uncertainly. “You can’t take it all back, you can’t just rewind time and expect the old glory days to come rushing back. No, listen to me - it won’t ever be the same,” she repeats. “Whatever happens, you’ll remember it, and it will change you.”

Maybe she’s wiser than he gives her credit for.

He doesn’t know what to say to that; there is a long stretch of silence, but a comfortable one, an easy one. All he can hear over the crackle of the fire is steady inhalations and exhalations of their sleeping company behind him. Next to him, DG stares into the fire, and her posture is tense and anticipatory, like a bird perched but about to take off.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” she says unexpectedly, and Cain can hear her throat constricting as she speaks, and a shudder runs through her body even though the fire is near.

She’s still not looking at him. But she reaches for his hand in the darkness, just as though she needs something to touch, and because he knows that feeling, _he knows_ , he holds her hand tight as he can.


End file.
